Surrogate Mom Best One To End All This Tumult

ELLEN GOODMAN THE BOSTON GLOBE

April 8, 2000|ELLEN GOODMAN THE BOSTON GLOBE

I turn on EliM-an TV. That's what it is these days: all EliM-an, all the time.

In this latter-day version, or perversion, of O.J. TV, we've watched a long struggle between two sides of the family become frozen into icy rhetoric. We've seen opponents in a political custody dispute, Big vs. Little Havana, accuse each other -- correctly -- of turning a boy into a pawn.

In four months, there have been sightings of the Virgin Mary on bank windows and statements from a mayor who threatens to defy the law like an old Southern sheriff. There have been craven words from presidential candidates and hysterical chants from crowds in front of a Miami home.

It's been like standing by as a divorcing couple slides into a battle so bitter they no longer see the look in their child's eyes.

But EliM-an TV has taken yet another turn. As I switch from one channel to another, I am struck by how EliM-an's cousin has been turned into EliM-an's mother.

I don't mean that literally. The 21-year-old Marisleysis GonzM-alez, whose credibility and caring have made her the family spokesperson, has not purposely deluded herself or the boy. She is the person most centered on the child since the moment he held onto her like another life raft.

She has rapidly become the mother figure of this case. "I am the one closest to him," she says repeatedly. Mother knows best.

This is not just her expression. Remember the words of the family lawyer. "There are issues concerning the traumas the child has suffered, issues concerning the mother he has in his life now," said Kendall Coffey on EliM-an TV. He was, of course, referring to Marisleysis as "the mother."

After four months, the bond that EliM-an has formed with Marisleysis after the death of his mother and the absence of his father, becomes another reason to keep him from his father. The fact that the bereft child formed another attachment becomes an excuse: It wouldn't be right to break another attachment.

An unjust delay becomes another rationale for injustice.

And the father? Many in the Cuban-American community have turned Juan Miguel GonzM-alez into a suspect, an unfit father until proven otherwise.

It is Marisleysis who receives and relays EliM-an's thoughts about his father and his fatherland: "All he asks me is, `Please don't let them take me.'"

Are we to believe that such fear blooms on its own without any seed or fertilizer?

The morphing of Marisleysis into mother points to a subplot of this drama: our deep and lingering feelings about men as second-class parents.

Imagine how this case would have appeared -- even in Little Havana -- if the roles had been reversed. What if Juan Miguel had taken the boy on a dangerous ocean voyage in a leaky boat without telling Elisabeth. Would the trip have been considered a heroic break for freedom? Or an abduction?

What if Juan Miguel had died and Elisabeth, safe in Cuba, had asked for her son back? Would we have considered Juan Miguel a martyr whose last wishes should be granted? Or would we have considered him an irresponsible father whose traumatized little boy needed his mother?

We know that EliM-an, cherished after many miscarriages, given a name composed of both mother and father, was raised jointly by the parents. But the same Miami family lawyer who talked of Marisleysis' "motherhood" questioned "his father's ability to deal with a traumatized child in a positive, nurturing way." Does a mother figure trump any father?

I don't at all disparage Marisleysis' motives or her genuine affection for EliM-an. Her life as a star of EliM-an TV in the pressure cooker of the Miami community, her existence in a home surrounded by the human chain, all landed this young, young woman in the hospital.

But she is not his mother.

This custody dispute has been compared endlessly to the biblical case before Solomon. But Solomon didn't know the real parent. We do.

I fear there is little chance for EliM-an to live a "normal" life. Sainted here, paraded there, what does normal mean? Six-year-olds are vulnerable. But 6-year-olds are resilient.

Now Juan Miguel has arrived in America. Life has asked a lot of Marisleysis in the past four months. At times it's overwhelmed the 21-year-old.

Now it asks one more thing. She alone can help her small, wounded cousin make the emotional transition back to where he belongs: with his father.